The U.S. War Department Was Right In 1947: Don’t Be A Sucker

What’s interesting about this film was that it was produced with 1940s men, all with 1940s perspectives and a 1940s idea about how cinema should look. Not naivete, but a sincerity that seems to pervade that period in flim.

If you contrast the tone of “Don’t Be A Sucker” with the more emotive and propagandist films of the 1950s, there’s a notable difference in approach — and if you guessed that it was the influence of the German sic Nazi film industry, you’d be right.

The film was produced by the U.S. War Department in 1943 as a counter to radicalism and ideological fervor just before the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s — fears that were realized and brought to light by men such as Whitaker Chambers.

The target of this particular film was fascism directly, and obliquely, the tactics used by demagogues to divide a polity.